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heres how i see it being a total win situation for you
1. stay with your wife while she dog sits. this wins husband points since she knows its out of your comfort zone
2. have sex all over her friends house so that the next time you see her friend look at you condescendingly, you can wink back knowing you did the freaky deaky where she eats her cheerios.

CBB: TJ and Amal is a buddy comic strip. We’ve seen a few of those, even in the super hero genre. But I’ve never seen one like yours. What inspired you to create this feature?

E.K. Weaver: There wasn’t a single, specific inspiration. I’ve always adored films and TV shows where the character relationships and character development are the defining factors. I love comics and animation that use silence and body language to convey as much information as dialogue. On top of that, I’m a big fan of the “strangers thrust together by chance gradually form close bonds” setup (e.g. Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo)… so I guess I’m just making the kind of story I’d want to read.

CBB: The story feels like it was written by someone with very close experience to the types of characters TJ and Amal are. But obviously, you’re a married woman and not a gay guy living in San Francisco. Are the characters based on real people or you did a lot of research to give them that authentic feel?

E.K. Weaver: A little of both. There are elements in their personalities that are derived from people I know, but I also did a lot of research.

Agh, “research” makes it sound so cold and clinical. Really, it consisted of listening to and reading a lot of personal stories – books, blogs, memoirs, essays, poetry, any personal experience – as well as constructing the characters’ histories by figuring out what their childhoods and family lives might have been like. What resources were available in this school district, wealthy neighbourhoods, poor neighbourhoods, religious upbringing, family dynamics, et cetera. How all these factors may have shaped them.

I didn’t set out with the specific goal of wanting to write “a realistic gay guy”. There’s no universal experience for gay dudes any more than for any other group. TJ and Amal are individuals with their own identities and experiences. Being gay (or in TJ’s case, just generally not-straight) is a facet of that, and it is part of what shapes their lives, but it’s not a limit… it’s not the beginning and end of who they are.

CBB: When reading TJ and Amal, I really found myself liking the story and the very realistic feel. One thing that did bug me in a way was the yaoi label applied to it. It felt like it wasn’t written for me even though I enjoyed it a lot. Like I was not the targeted demographic group supposed to read it. How do you feel about such labels and how they influence what people will say about comics or even how they recommend them?

E.K. Weaver: Genre labels can be both convenient and frustrating. If you’re primarily interested in sci-fi, for example, it’s handy to have that label to gravitate towards. But for works that span genres, or don’t adhere to genre conventions, labels can be reductive and even detrimental. TJ and Amal isn’t aimed at any particular genre or demographic. I hope it’ll attract readers who enjoy fun dialogue and interesting characters, but beyond that… nope, that’s all I care about. I honestly don’t have a solid label for it, myself.

I used to get pretty down when someone would label TJ and Amal “yaoi”, since that label carries a connotation of shallowness and meaninglessness, but… I don’t know, fretting about it, trying to fight it seems like a waste of energy. People will call it what they want, and if the story is strong enough, it’ll break past those labels.

Archemix, on the other hand, is (was?) a small Cambridge, MA biopharmaceutical firm that has slides online from years past speaking of Strong Financial History but whose current website merely gives the address of a liquidating trust.